1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for finding product and service related information on the National Information Infrastructure (e.g. the Internet).
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Presently, an enormous amount of time, money and effort is being expended by companies in order to advertise and sell their products and services, and after product purchase has taken place, to provide product related information, product warranty service and the like. For decades, various types of media have been used to realize such fundamental business functions.
In recent times, there has been a number of significant developments in connection with the global information network called the "Internet", which has greatly influenced many companies to create multi-media Internet Websites in order to advertise, sell and maintain their products and services. Examples of such developments include, for example: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) by Tim Berners-Lee; easy to use GUI-based Internet navigation tools, such as the Netscape.RTM. browser from Netscape Communications, Inc., the Internet Explorer.TM. browser from MicroSoft Corporation and the Mosaic.TM. browser from Spyglass Corporation; and the Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) by Mark Pecse. Such developments in recent times have made it very easy for businesses to create 2-D Hypermedia-based Home Pages and 3-D VR Worlds (i.e. 3-D Websites) for the purpose of projecting a desired "corporate image" and providing a backdrop for financial investment solicitation as well as product and service advertisement, sales and maintenance operations.
Presently, a person desiring to acquire information about any particular product sold anywhere in the world, has had a number of search options available to them. In particular, he or she may attempt to directly contact the manufacturer, wholesaler or reseller by telephone, US mail, e-mail, or through the company's World Wide Website (WWW), if they have one. In the event one decides to acquire product information through the seller's WWW site, he or she must first determine the location of its WWW site (i.e. Internet address) which oftentimes can involve using Internet Search engines such as Yahoo, AltaVista, WebCrawler, or the like. This can be a very time consuming process and sometimes lead to a dead end. Once the Internet address is obtained, one must then review the home page of the company in order to find where information on a particular product resides on the Internet. This search process can be both time consuming and expensive (in terms of Internet time) and may not turn up information on the product or service of interest.
In some instances, product brochures bear a preprinted Internet address designed to direct or point prospective customers to a particular Web site where more detailed product information can be found. A recent example of this "preprinted Web Address" pointing technique is the 1996 product brochure published by the Sony Corporation for its Sony.RTM. PCV-70 Personal Computer, which refers prospective customers to the Sony Web Address "http://www.sony.com/pc". While this approach provides a direct way of finding product and service related information on the Internet, it is not without its shortcomings and drawbacks.
In particular, when a company improves, changes or modifies an existing Website which publishes product and/or service advertisements and related information, it is difficult (if not impossible) not to change the Internet locations (i.e. Web addresses) at which such product and/or service advertisements and related information appear. Whenever a company decides or is forced to change any of its advertising, marketing and/or public relations firms, there is a substantial likelihood that new Websites will be created and launched for particular products and services, and that the Web addresses of such new Websites will no longer correspond with the Web addresses on preprinted product and service brochures currently in circulation at the time. This can result in pointing a consumer to erroneous or vacant Web sites, that present either old or otherwise outdated product and/or service information, possibly adversely influencing the consumer's purchasing decision.
Moreover, when a company launches a new Website as part of a new advertising and marketing campaign for a particular product or service, any preprinted advertising or marketing material relating to such products and services will not reflect the new Website addresses which the campaign is attempting to get consumers to visit. This fact about preprinted advertising media renders it difficult to unify new and old advertising media currently in circulation into an advertising and marketing campaign having a coherent theme.
In short, the inherently static nature of the "preprinted Web address" pointing technique described above is wholly incapable of adjusting to the dynamic needs of advertising, marketing and public relations alike.
Thus, it is clear that there is great need in the art for an improved system and method for finding commercial product and service information on the Internet, in a way which avoids the shortcomings and drawbacks of prior art systems and methodologies.